IX: Obama’s Triumph of the Will: The 2008 Primaries 355OBAMA IS WATERGATE-BAIT
In early May, Harold Ickes of the Clinton campaign had talked about an October surprise. This
could have meant a number of things, since Obama was indeed a scandal-rich contender, and one of
the prominent possibilities was the notorious Michelle Obama “Hate Whitey” tape, an apoplectic
outburst of racist rage by the Messiah’s consort, full of violent and obscene invective against the
white race, white American, and other objects of Michelle’s fascistoid rage cathexis. There was an
uneasy awareness, even among the most fanatical Obama acolytes, that there were more scandals
lurking in the Perfect Master’s closet: ‘The Clinton campaign has made it clear that Senator Clinton
remains in the race because anything can happen. That generally has been taken to mean that a
scandal could erupt that would cause the Obama campaign to implode. Some Reverend Wright on
steroids might burst into public view. Keep in mind what happened to Eliot Spitzer.’ (Bob Herbert,
New York Times, May 27, 2008)
RESULT: A LONG HOT SUMMER OF SCANDAL DOSSIERS
Karl Rove increasingly resembled the Japanese Admiral Nagumo at Midway, who dithered and
hesitated when he should have been launching his attack waves at the earliest possible moment. As
a result, he was caught flat-footed with his planes warming up on deck when the main US dive
bomber attack materialized; four Japanese carriers were sunk and the war was as good as lost. Karl
Rove seemed to think that he could hold the Michelle Obama “Hate Whitey” tape in reserve until
mid-October, using it in the next few months to harvest huge quantities of GOP cash to stoke the
fires of his 527 empire. Karl might be more interested in getting his hands on that cash than in
anything else. But he was risking watching McCain get the Spitzer treatment and be swept away in
72 hours. The summer 2008 battle of the scandal dossiers was like thermonuclear war: the greatest
advantage was to be gained by a successful first strike, after which the retaliatory riposte would be
weak and disorganized. The new motto for the holders of the scandal dossiers should be” “Use ‘em
or lose ‘em.” Whatever scandal dossiers you attempt to hold in reserve are likely to be useless, since
your own candidate can be taken down in a day or two, and once such an attack has started it will be
almost impossible to stop it or even disrupt it. Once McCain had the GOP nomination, he was wide
open to scandal attack. The wiser course for the GOP oppo research brigade was to recognize that
Obama was the FBI-CIA intelligence community candidate, and that he was the one slated to enjoy
a scandal-assisted quest for the White House as his opponents were destroyed – or, for that matter,
liquidated. It was far better to destroy Obama before he attained the Democratic nomination, thus
making Hillary the candidate. Hillary was herself more or less impervious to scandals, having
thrived in the crucible of Whitewatergate and Monicagate, but she was not going to get the same
kind of help from the FBI that Obama was sure to have. McCain’s best chance was, ironically and
in contrast to the usual rules, to unload everything preemptively on Obama in June and July, and
then mobilize for a more or less fair fight with Hillary in September and October. If Karl Rove and
company did not do this, it could only mean that they were blinded by greed and not that much
concerned about McCain’s fate, after all.
THE LIKELY CATASTROPHE OF AN OBAMA PRESIDENCY
May of 2008 saw the death of Hamilton Jordan, who had been Jimmy Carter’s top crony from
the Georgia mafia and White House Chief of Staff. David Broder, one of the top ideological
watchdogs of the financier establishment, took this occasion to refer back to interviews that Jordan
had given to historians soon after the end of the disastrous Carter administration. Jordan’s main